UNESCO has just set a date for the celebration of the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee, which will take place from September 10 to 25 in the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The meeting will decide if Talayotic Menorca is finally appointed as a World Heritage Site. This will be the end of a long road started in 2010, and a positive outcome would mean a recognition of the universality of Talayotic culture.
The Vice President and Conseller of Cultural Affairs, Miquel Àngel Maria, has stated his satisfaction with the news. “The important thing is that we already have a date and place. The candidacy has been ready for a year. Now we just have to wait until September. I would have preferred the Committee to have been held between the end of June and the beginning of July, as usual, but the call in September is welcome”.
Vice President Maria recalled that, in accordance with the regulations of the World Heritage Committee, six weeks before the start of the meeting, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) must send its final report to all nomnees. "This means that at the beginning of August we will receive this report, and we will already know if ICOMOS proposes the direct inscription of Talayotic Menorca on the World Heritage List, or if we will still have to fight for it during the September meeting.” In any case, Maria is confident that the good work done in recent years will be crowned with the inscription.
The Consell Insular de Menorca will send a delegation to Riyadh, whose composition will be decided according to the post-election calendar.
This announcement comes after a few months of uncertainty due to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, something that caused the suspension of the first call of the 45th Committee that was to be held last July in Kazan, on Russian territory.
The complicated situation at UNESCO was unblocked at the end of November last year, with the resignation of the Russian ambassador as Chairman of the Committee. During the 17th extraordinary session of the World Heritage Committee, held on December 12, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia, Princess Haifa Al Mogrin, assumed the presidency of this body.
World Heritage Committee
The Committee is the intergovernmental body in charge of enforcing the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage signed in Paris on November 16th, 1972. It is tasked with elaborating, updating and publishing a list with the cultural properties that hold unique and exceptional universal value. The committee is formed by 21 member states or States Parties that are renewed periodically.
The States Parties are the 194 countries (Spain included) that, to this date, have ratified the World Heritage Convention. Each state identifies the properties susceptible of being included in the World Heritage List, verifies the state of preservation of the inscribed properties and propose a property from their territories to be included in the list, as
the Spanish state has done with our candidacy for 2022.
Currently, the World Heritage List includes a total of 1,121 sites and monuments (869 cultural properties, 213 natural properties and 39 mixed) from 167 member states.